The House Committee on Energy and Commerce announced on May 28 a hearing titled ‘Where Are We?: Examining Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capabilities in the United States.’ The hearing is scheduled for June 4 at 10:15 AM ET in the Rayburn House Office Building and will be open to the public and press.
Chairman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky and Chairman Richard Hudson of North Carolina said, “The U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) underlies critical technologies Americans use and rely on every day, but many people may not realize GPS applications extend far beyond the map apps on their phones. From national defense and critical infrastructure, such as banking and energy, to the daily routines of nearly every American, even a temporary GPS outage would drastically affect hundreds of millions of lives. We look forward to a conversation about how we can strengthen positioning, navigation, and timing services to maximize resiliency and reliability.”
Mariam Sorond, CEO and Board Chair of NextNav Inc., submitted a statement for the record emphasizing that PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) is essential for modern life. According to Sorond, “PNT is the invisible but essential backbone upon which much of modern life depends. Positioning tells you where you are. Navigation tells you how to get where you are going. And timing provides a precise common clock that lets independent systems agree on when something happened, or must happen, down to the billionth of a second.” Sorond said that nearly all PNT services depend on GPS satellites but noted vulnerabilities due to lack of backup systems.
Sorond described incidents in 2022 involving jamming at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and interference at Denver International Airport as examples of risks associated with GPS disruptions. She said that other countries like China and Russia have developed complementary or backup systems while the United States has not yet done so.
Sorond explained NextNav’s role in providing ground-based PNT solutions as both backup and complement to GPS using existing 5G infrastructure: “NextNav is proud to have developed a commercially viable ground-based complement and backup to GPS that can be deployed in the near term, on existing 5G infrastructure, and at no cost to taxpayers.” She called for Congress’s continued oversight in building resilient PNT architecture capable of withstanding various threats.
The hearing will feature discussion from industry leaders about strengthening national positioning systems’ resiliency.
